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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28143987">Never Be Drowned</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/athousandwinds/pseuds/athousandwinds'>athousandwinds</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>And Then There Were None (TV 2015)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Groundhog Day (1993) Fusion, F/M, Murder, mild exhibitionism</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 16:07:15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,472</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28143987</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/athousandwinds/pseuds/athousandwinds</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>"You know what they say, he’d joked, if you’re born to be hanged you’ll never be drowned."</p><p>Vera Claythorne is trapped in a time loop.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Vera Claythorne/Philip Lombard</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>93</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Yuletide 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Never Be Drowned</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/trillingstar/gifts">trillingstar</a>.</li>



    </ul></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>i.</strong>
</p><p>Once Vera was sitting in a teashop when a man approached her. He’d recognised her from her picture in the paper: brave governess nearly drowns trying to save her charge. It was a flirtation, an awkward one, and she’d felt so flat after Hugo broke things off that she let it go on, indifferent. The only thing he knew about her was the inquest. You know what they say, he’d joked, if you’re born to be hanged you’ll never be drowned.</p><p>Vera opens her eyes. Tony Marston is staring back at her, his gaze wide and frightened, as he chokes up blood.</p><p>“Get him off me!” she shouts hoarsely, as he clings tighter, determined to force some comfort out of her as he dies. Lombard hauls him off and Tony Marston collapses onto the floor, still shuddering, until suddenly he’s not any more. Vera wipes his blood off her cheek. The whole thing has the unreal aspect of a recurring dream.</p><p>There’s a long silence as everyone registers that he’s dead. She looks at Justice Wargrave, who seems as shocked as anyone. There’s a gleam in his eye, though, which she didn’t see before. Or is there? Is it only that she knows, now, that he’s just killed someone for the first time?</p><p>She drinks the brandy Lombard offers her without hesitation; he allows their fingertips to brush as he hands her the glass. The touch shocks her back to reality.</p><p>“Thank you,” she says, so soft he has to bend his head close to hers to catch it. When the recriminations begin, she stays out of it, sipping the brandy and letting it warm her. She’s still cold from the sea, from lying next to Lombard’s corpse as it eddied with the tide, pliable in death as he never would have believed he was in life.</p><p>It’s all horrid, of course, but no one really <em>believes</em> Tony Marston was murdered, not tonight, and so everyone retires to their rooms with a minimum of suspicion. Vera shuts her door behind her and looks up at the ceiling. The hook is still there. Naturally it’s still there, unless whatever brought her back to this moment thought of another way to punish her.</p><p>Abruptly, she can’t stand to sleep in her room. A plan has been percolating in her mind all evening, and for Vera there’s almost no gap between thought and deed. She slips quietly from her room and knocks gently on Lombard’s door.</p><p>He’s surprised to see her so soon into the house party, but his vanity provides all the explanation she could want and his mouth is warm on her sea-chilled skin. He kisses like he’s already ten steps ahead in this game, as if it’s a game, as if he’s winning at something. There’s no prize for him at the end of this race, no blue rosette and a kiss on the cheek from the squire’s wife. Only one thing awaits them in the cold early morning.</p><p>The first time they did this, he pinned her wrists down, unwilling to let her hands be too free. This Philip Lombard doesn’t know why he should be careful; he thinks he’s fucking a prim secretary with a dark secret, not his murderer. He’s happy to let her do the work and when her hands ghost over his throat he groans loudly enough to break the silence of the night. Afterwards, he falls asleep with her still awake in the bed. It’s not trust – it’s naiveté. They all learned so much in the three days they were here.</p><p>The drawer of his bedside table slides out easily; well-oiled and completely silent. The gun is sitting on top of a pile of clean underwear. Vera takes it, slides the drawer shut, and leaves.</p><p>Justice Wargrave has had no other visitors tonight. Vera wonders if that means she’s the only one who remembers, or if none of the rest of them ever saw their murderer.</p><p>Like a parsimonious old man, he sleeps with only one pillow, the other abandoned on the other side of a large bed. Vera picks it up; waste not want not. She presses the muzzle of the gun into the feather down.</p><p>The judge opens his eyes. He looks at her calmly.</p><p>Vera fires through the pillow.</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>ii.</strong>
</p><p>Vera wakes up. Tony Marston is grabbing her again. Lombard obliges her again.</p><p>For some reason, it’s difficult to calm down this time. The exhaustion has hit – in her mind, she’s gone three days without sleep. Rather than go back to her room, she curls up on the uncomfortable sofa in the white and gold drawing room and forces herself to count sheep. When that doesn’t work, she counts questions instead.</p><p>One. How is it that she’s now lived the same series of events three times?</p><p>Two. Why is it that she’s now lived the same series of events three times?</p><p>Three. Is it possible to stop living them?</p><p>Four. Does anyone else know what’s happening?</p><p>Justice Wargrave might. She shudders, curling up tighter on the sofa. No, he’s got his two victims for the night. He’ll want to pace himself. When he was a little boy, Justice Wargrave never tried to wheedle for dessert before dinner.</p><p>Killing him outright won’t do, at least not on its own; she’s proven that already. There’s something else this place wants from her. Contrition? Wasn’t hanging herself good enough? Perhaps not, it wouldn’t have been enough for Hugo. Suffering?</p><p>It might have been suffering.</p><p>The vicar’s daughter in her understands that questions one and two are the same question. This is Hell, nor is she out of it.</p><p>This time, she sits tight until Wargrave fakes his death and then she takes a kitchen knife and plunges it into his neck. Armstrong shouts, but the blood runs. Wargrave, unnaturally still throughout the process, only opens his eyes then. He smiles, very faintly.</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>iii.</strong>
</p><p>By the fifth time, she’s quite certain that Wargrave remembers every loop. On the fifth loop, it’s he who hands her the brandy after Tony Marston’s death, with a smile that’s almost paternal in its condescension.</p><p>“I look forward to seeing your method this time, my dear Miss Claythorne,” he says. Vera downs the brandy in one go, almost hoping he poisoned it.</p><p>She lives.</p><p>This loop becomes an experiment. If she interferes not at all, if she just allows the judge to do what he likes, does that change anything?</p><p>To pass the time, she drinks. There’s plenty of it and it keeps her nerves from getting too strung out, pushes back the sense of strain. It’s comfortable here on the bearskin rug.</p><p>“You’ve not been very much help, Miss Claythorne,” Philip Lombard says from the doorway.</p><p>“No,” she says, as if it’s only just occurred to her. He shuts the door behind him with a purposeful click and comes to sit beside her on the rug.</p><p>Vera offers him her glass and he takes it, drinks from it. <em>Really</em> drinks from it, not just pretend. But then, Philip never really did see her as a threat. He thought he knew all about her. Didn’t he? What do men like Philip Lombard think when they see Miss Claythornes in their high-necked dresses? That there’s a beast inside, dying for the chance to go wild. A beast that they’ll like.</p><p>She touches her fingers to his temple, pushing his hair back from his face. No hair oil, not for Philip Lombard. Even in black tie he looks like exactly what he is: a natural predator. Vera, on the other hand, doesn’t even look like a killer when she’s wearing mourning.</p><p>When he moves in for a kiss, she bites his lip and suddenly they fall upon each other, half-ravenous. There’s a viciousness to it she likes, scattering buttons all over the floor: masterful, arrogant, very E.M. Hull. His hand intrudes up her thigh. Her stockings are gone God knows where, torn and then abandoned at some point during the day, much to Miss Brent’s sharp disapproval. Philip’s sharp intake of breath when he realises is gratifying.</p><p>Wearing a torn stocking is worth a black mark at Vera’s school, and two black marks mean the cancellation of a girl’s swimming lessons. The girls aren’t allowed to go swimming in the sea. It’s dangerous. She almost laughs.</p><p>The bear’s head digs into the small of her back as he presses inside her, insistent on her letting him in. She moans loudly, allowing her head to fall back.</p><p>There’s no lock on the door.</p><p>Any of the others could walk in. Vera before Soldier Island would have cared; Vera before Soldier Island would have hated being caught. Now it only eggs her on: let that dried-up old stick see it, let pinch-mouthed Miss Brent die of shock, let Armstrong see some real hysterics for once.</p><p>For Philip it’s a competition. The more she likes it, the more superior he gets; every time someone dies and it’s not him, it’s his victory. He’s willing to bring her along with him, he says. That’s a line. Not the kind of line nice girls get; not the kind of line bad girls get. A Vera line. That’s what they all say.</p><p>But he has his victory all the same. Vera feels the moan choke her, like being smacked in the chest by a cricket ball, when she feels the length of him like a line of fire inside her. She cries out. Other men might have tried to quiet her down; Philip thrusts faster and faster, the thump of the bear’s head an erratic drumbeat. Vera shoves herself back against him, determined to get what she’s owed, biting his shoulder as punishment. It only spurs him on, thrusting harder, until she’s fisting her hand in his hair, clenched tight around him. It occurs to her that she’s fucking a monster; twenty-one nightmares.</p><p>Of course, so is he.</p><p>She doesn’t mean for that to be the trigger, but the thought ripples through her like the easing of a cramp, flooding through her body as she lets go. A noise rips out of her throat, loud enough to wake the dead.</p><p>With one last grunt, Philip empties himself into her, burying his face in the crook of her neck and letting out a sawing breath. She allows him to lie on top of her for a few moments while he pulls himself together. It’s – nice, she supposes, to feel real for a little while. Eventually he shifts his weight and they shuffle around until he’s holding her, absurdly domestic. Spooning in a graveyard.</p><p>“Who do you like for it?” he murmurs into her hair.</p><p>“Hmm?”</p><p>“Tubs is panicking and Armstrong doesn’t have the gumption. So who do you think our friend Mr Owen is? Unless I’m right and it’s someone else.”</p><p>“It’s Justice Wargrave,” she says.</p><p>He stills in her arms.</p><p>It’s her certainty that convinces him in the end. Philip can’t abide helplessness – despises it – and at the very least he’d rather shoot an old man than do nothing at all. When he cocks the revolver at Wargrave, the judge looks only at Vera.</p><p>“Really, is this your new scheme?” he asks drily. “It seems a very old one.”</p><p>Vera says nothing. She learned her lesson the first time.</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>iv.</strong>
</p><p>Vera opens her eyes. She doesn’t even have to scream this time before Lombard wrenches Marston off her, throwing him to the ground. He’s furious, dark eyes glittering.</p><p>Armstrong tries to insert himself. “For God’s sake, man, let him off! Can’t you see he’s not well?”</p><p>Marston is already dead by the time Lombard pulls his fist back. Vera wipes the blood off her cheek absently, her brow furrowing.</p><p>This time the recriminations are angrier. Armstrong makes no secret of the fact that he thinks Lombard a violent thug who more or less killed Marston; Justice Wargrave, smiling, suggests that after all it was an accident, and shouldn’t be added to Lombard’s tally. Vera pours her own brandy, this time.</p><p>She’s expecting retaliation. For the first time since the loop started, she goes to sleep in her room, with the door locked and a chair wedged under the handle. It shouldn’t matter whether Wargrave kills her in this loop, of course – it might even make a difference in how the next one goes, if he gets his own hands dirty doing it – but she doesn’t want to give him the satisfaction.</p><p>The next morning she sticks close to Lombard, not bothering to go through the motions of encouraging everyone to pack. He doesn’t either, choosing instead to stalk along the edge of the sheer drop down onto the beach. Looking for Mr Owen, Vera supposes. She walks alongside him, lost in thought.</p><p>Eventually he stops at a point far above the rocks. He says, “This should do.”</p><p>“Oh?” Vera asks, or tries to, but she’s drowned out by a loud noise. Pain blossoms in her chest, behind her left breast, and the air is gone from her lungs. She topples backwards, but she never hits the rocks.</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>v.</strong>
</p><p>Vera opens her eyes.</p><p>The first thing she says to Philip when she gets him alone, in her severest governess voice, is: “Now, have you got all that out of your system?”</p><p>He throws himself down onto the sofa in the small library. She sees him glance at the bearskin rug and his mouth twitches into a faint smirk. “All right,” he says evenly.</p><p>“Good.” She sits down next to him. “Did killing me change anything?”</p><p>“No.” After a pause, he adds: “It put me back here straightaway.”</p><p>“I wonder if the judge knows.”</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>The remark is terse. Vera looks at him sidelong. “He was surprised to end up back here so soon,” she surmises. Philip nods.</p><p>She sleeps in his room that night, or rather she lies there in Philip’s bed, wide awake and thinking. When the dawn light leaks through the curtains, she shakes his shoulder. She has an idea.</p><p>They encounter Armstrong on the stairs, just coming up from the servants’ quarters. He looks queasy; unhappy. “Mrs Rogers is dead,” he tells them.</p><p>“I’m so sorry to hear that,” Vera says, mimicking concern. Philip doesn’t bother. Armstrong watches them leave.</p><p>They trudge down to the beach. The waves are choppy today, but it isn’t raining, and they have a limited number of days to choose from. Vera strips down to her swimsuit; Philip to his.</p><p>“It’s two miles to the mainland,” he says. “Think you can make it?”</p><p>“I’m a strong swimmer,” Vera says. It feels like a confession. It is a confession. But Philip shrugs it off, quite genuinely indifferent.</p><p>“I suppose we were born to be hanged,” he says, and plunges into the water.</p>
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